"Garth" by Frank Bellamy

My recent acquisition, two originals of the comic Garth by Frank Bellamy. Two continuing episodes of the story were published in the Daily Mirror newspaper on June 11th and 12th, 1975.

"Cazador y presa" by Arturo Del Castillo

My latest acquisition—an original page from the comic Cazador y presa by Arturo Del Castillo. It's the last page of this comic.  

I already have two pages from his comic El Cobra in my collection. You can see the pages here and here.

 

"Up Anchor!" comic by Kreigh Collins

My recent acquisition is this quite large page of Up Anchor! comic by Kreigh Collins from 1970.

Kreigh Taylor Collins (1908 – 1974), born in Davenport, Iowa, was an American cartoonistbest known for the comic strip Kevin the Bold. In 1968, Collins began working on the comic strip Up Anchor!, a story in modern setting about sailing, loosely based on his own experiences of sailing. Up Anchor! was published as a Sunday comic strip until 1972.  

Here you can read and see more comics by Kreigh Collins.  

 This is not my first page of Kreigh Collins's comics. I already have a page of his comic Kevin the Bold, which you can see here. 

The last image shows how the comic looks in print.

 

 

"Where the Wild Lines Are"

I just received the catalogue for the exhibition Where the Wild Lines Are – Books and Illustrations for Children at Die Neue Sammlung (The Design Museum) in Munich.

This exhibition comprises illustrated children’s books from Die Neue Sammlung’s collection and is curated by Caroline Fuchs. The exhibition will be on display until January 26, 2025.

I am quite pleased to see that several children’s books I donated to the museum are included in both the exhibition and the catalogue, and I even received credit for them.

 

The PRINT Award for Milton Glaser: POP Book

On October 30th, I received an unexpected Fedex package. It was quite heavy.

When I started to open it, each step became more and more mysterious. The black wraparound, the golden box and when I opened the box, I found a heavy piece of marble nestled in silk cushioning, on top of which was a note on how to maintain it and a cleaning cloth. It turned out to be the PRINT Award for my book design of Milton Glaser: POP. In my long career, I've never received such a physically substantial award before.

The award weighs 6.8 pounds (2.9 kg) and measures 5 x 7.2 x 2 inches (13 x 18 x 5 cm).

Since I received it the day before Halloween and it was black, my first thought was that I could use it as a tombstone. But I am a positive guy and I thought, if I get a few more, maybe they could be the foundation of the Mirkokhamun pyramid or my new house.

Thank you PRINT Magazine for opening up the possibility of my future endeavours.

You can see the award-winning Milton Glaser: POP book design here.

 

 

"In Harm's Way" Poster by Saul Bass

Recently, I acquired this poster for the movie In Harm's Way by Otto Preminger from 1962.

 

I didn't acquire it only because it was designed by Saul Bass, rather, despite it being a story about U.S. Navy officers in 1941 in the Pacific Ocean, I find something very ominous about this image. Maybe because of professional deformation, I associate this image with something else.

My Posters at the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts

I am happy to share that my posters Oedipus, My Husband, The Tin Drum, Uncle Vanya, and The Loser, created for the JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia, have been included in the Europe Theater Poster Design Exhibition.

The Europe Theater Poster Design Exhibition is part of the Visual Design Art Week at the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts and the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in China. The exhibition opened on October 12th, 2024, coinciding with the opening ceremony of the C-IDEA Conference 2024 Chengdu.

I am grateful to the curator, Li Xu, and the co-curator, Ivan Mišić, for inviting me to be a part of this exhibition.

You can see more of my JDP posters here.

 

My recent acquisition—the daily comics of Modesty Blaise by Neville Colvin from 1984. I now have quite a few Modesty Blaisecomics in my collection, and I think from now on, I’ll start paying attention to some other comic heroes from my youth.

 

You can see my other Modesty Blaise originals here.

 

 

My Teeth in the Theatre

My artwork on the posters and merchandise of Teeth—a new play at New World Stages, NYC. The poster is art directed by Nicky Lindeman at Spotco.

Dawn O’Keefe is an evangelical Christian teen with a powerful secret not even she understands—when men violate her, her body bites back. Literally. From Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs, Teeth, based on the cult classic film of the same name, is a fierce, rapturous and savagely entertaining new musical crackling with irrepressible desire and ancient rage—a dark comedy conjuring the legend of one girl whose sexual curse is also her salvation. 

You can see more images of the project here.

 

Stories From The Bible by Nestor Redondo

I recently acquired these two pages of the ongoing series Mga Kasaysayan Buhat Sa Bibliya (Stories From The Bible) published by Redondo publishing company in the 1960s. 

The seller attributed them to Tony DeZuñiga. Unfortunately for the seller and fortunately for me, I think the attribution was wrong. After seeing the drawing, I have no doubt that the art was done by Nestor Redondo.

Nestor P. Redondo (1928 – 1995) was probably the most famous Filipino comics artist. He is best known for his work for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and other American publishers in the 1970s and early 1980s. In his native Philippines, he is known for co-creating the superheroine Darna.

I already have one page of Redondo's comic from the 1970s in my collection. You can check it out here. 

 

Cover Illustration for Polet

Stjepan Micak, a friend of mine, is collecting, retouching, and categorizing my illustrations and comics from newspapers in Croatia, and he knows more about that aspect of my work than I do. He just sent me this front page of Polet from 1977.

Polet was a weekly newspaper of the Association of Socialist Youth of Croatia. The headline of this cover was about the reform of the educational system in Croatia. I was a comic editor at Polet, and I also created many illustrations for them. Most of them, like this one, were drawn on the spot at the office.

By the way, Stjepan collected and assembled a book of my early comics, published under the title From the History of Human Stupidity. Here you can read about that.

 

 

JDP Posters in The Daily Heller

'Sometimes a poster beckons a viewer in mysterious ways. Mirko Ilic’s eight seasons designing posters for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia, are very special because they enable the designer to interpret the material in any way that makes sense. Each season is rendered in a generally different but uniform manner. In this sense, it is the perfect job for a conceptual artist who likes to move to the beat of his own tin drum (which is one of the posters he’s done). For these posters, anything goes as long as they pique the theater-goer’s interest.' –Steven Heller (Daily Heller)